"From Fishing to Farmers Markets" ....news & events, issues & ideas

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

New Food & Wine Issue-April

Steve and I are on a road trip, attending a WA State sardine meeting, and now in Westport to meet with potential markets and projects for our canned business. My first issue of Food & Wine appeared in our wad of mail I had stuffed into my briefcase. What a wonderful array of articles and recipes for a foodie!My favorite was a Fresh tuna salad with Avocado... and the other was the California grilled sardines ,which is in a section called " 7 california ingredients you must taste now."

The avocado dish features fresh troll caught albacore,I assume it's troll caught, that is poached in olive oil, fennel seeds, and peppercorns about 15 minutes. The tuna is then flaked into 1" chunks and folded into a dressing of mayo, chopped capers, celery, olives, onion, garlic, lemon, and minced anchovies. Scooped into an avocado half and topped with peashoots or alfalfa sprouts, this sounds like a meal on my "must try" list,...a huge & growing list I might add.

Our little Papa George Gourmet Albacore ad is coming out in April & May's Saveur Magazine. The proof shows it right above Thompson's Cigars, Steve's favorite mail order cigar shop. It will run in October and November too.

Our industry must transform to a new reality.......Humanely caught and cooked lobster. PETA takes on the Maine lobster industry demanding that the tasty crustaceans not be plunged into boiling water toward their untimely death and distribution to the gourmet's plate with melted butter. There are too many people with nothing else to do......

Squid season in San Pedro is over. The markets quit buying and the weather has been lousy all week. Next week sardines. How can a fisherman humanely catch 70 tons of sardines a night?Is it humane to make a fisherman stay away from home, stuck on a smelly heaving boat in a sleep deprived state?

At our insurance pool business meeting, we engaged in a conversation about "salvage" claims. It rises from a catastrophic marina fire in Gig Harbor in which friends of ours were involved. Their two boats were tied together, the tuna troller rafted outside of the yacht, when the fire spread quickly down the marina dock. Our friend woke up smelling smoke, ran down the dock warning other liveaboards to flee, and then untied his two boats, one on fire, to escape the rapidly advancing flames. The yacht and troller drifted away as two crewmembers from the troller put out the fire on the yacht. During the melee, a small commercial boat of some type came up to offer assistance. It was denied because it wasn't necessary. The boat continued to linger and offer help. After a while, in the exhaustion of escaping and fighting a fire on his yacht, our friend accepted a line from this boat, which then towed the yacht and troller across Gig Harbor, away from the fire. Case closed.But no. A month later, our friend gets a law suit claiming salvage on the two vessels, for the sum of over a million dollars! Maritime law states that salvage of a vessel equals one third of the value of the vessel. This law suit is brought by the small commercial vessel which hung around bugging our friends to take a line. Isn't there something about connivance or fraud involved here? All boat owners must be aware of sharks like this.

Papa George Gourmet Albacore has a brand new canning today. Our canner is still busy when he thought it should have slowed down by now. Canned tuna has gotten some good press lately but when you go through the search engines looking for "canned tuna" or "canned albacore", the same advertisements with dire warnings about mercury are still in evidence.